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Last Woman on Earth
Post-Apocu-Drama
1960
Review: September 26, 2006
Director: Roger Corman
Starring: Betsy Jones-Moreland, Antony Carbone, Robert Towne
Of moderate assistance.
THE SETUP:
Two men and one woman may be the last people alive on Earth. So the guys fight over the woman.
DISCUSSION:
I have this 50 Horror Classics boxed set that I paid like $20 for [making it $0.40 per movie], and I have seriously underappreciated it for the year or more I’ve had it. It contains classics like the silent Phantom of the Opera and Nosferatu and things like White Zombie, as well as a wide selection of little cheesy 50s, 60s and 70s movies of varying quality, but many of them quite interesting, and otherwise nearly lost to time. For example this movie, an intriguing low-key sci-fi gem which also has the distinction of being the first film written by [and starring!] Robert Towne [Chinatown].
This was directed by Roger Corman, but don’t let that dissuade you. Apparently Corman liked to save money by shooting two movies at once in whatever locale he was in, and this one was shot simultaneously with the considerably worse [although I think higher-profile] Creature from the Haunted Sea. The Corman of this film is the more restrained and artful one, and while I initially despaired upon seeing his name in the credits, the rest of the film mostly avoided the kind of cheap schlock I know him for.
We begin, wholly symbolically, at a cock fight. Harold Gern is this American businessman hiding out in Puerto Rico, because he has been indicted for shady business dealings back in the states. He is there with his wife Evelyn, played by the stunningly gorgeous Betsy Jones-Moreland. Evelyn obviously hates Harold, and Harold doesn’t care, because he regards her as his property, and her thoughts and feelings are pretty much irrelevant to him. Evelyn feels much more positively toward Martin, Harold’s lawyer, played by screenwriter Robert Towne under an assumed name. The story is that Corman wasn’t sure about the state of the script at the time they started shooting, so he made Towne act in the film as a way of also keeping the screenwriter around to write.
At one point Evelyn, who has been drinking, walks along the railing of the hotel’s balcony in front of Martin, at risk of falling to her death. She tells Martin “I think I have a death wish. Without booze, I wouldn’t have made it this far.” They are soon joined by Harold, and they engage in some VERY Towne-esque relationship dialogue, which is something one can be thankful for in an ostensibly schlocky sci-fi B-movie like this. Anyway, it definitely seems that there is some tension between Harold and Martin, as Martin has no respect for his employer Harold in either business or personal matters, and Harold doesn’t care.
This all stands out in retrospect for the nice, leisurely amount of time this film spends of laying out character relationships before the central action of the movie starts. Contrast this with the recent remake of Poseidon [Adventure], in which they cut all of the boring pre-catastrophe stuff they shot because hello, characters, who needs ‘em? So the next day our resentful trio go scuba-fishing, where they are “attacked” by a manta ray, in one of the few typical Corman moments. This causes Evelyn to shoot Martin in the shoulder with a spear gun, one of the first moments when you realize that it’s really hard to tell Harold and Martin apart, especially in the high-contrast B&W photography. As you can tell, it’s extremely important to know if Evelyn shot Martin or “accidentally” shot Harold, but it’s quite late in the scene before you can actually tell.
Nevertheless, when they come back up for air, all oxygen has been removed from the planet. Somehow. So they pilot back to land, still wearing their scuba gear. This necessitates long scenes in which to hold a conversation, the characters have to remove the mouthpiece from their mouths, speak, then cram the rather sizeable mouthpiece back into their mouths, which does make for some very bizarre sequences. Eventually they determine that some force has blown all the oxygen off the Earth, but back on Puerto Rico, the oxygen has been replaced. They can tell this because they couldn’t light a match out at sea, but they can on land. And as if that weren’t enough for you science fans, the reason they can breathe on land is that the PLANTS there have, in the past hour, created enough oxygen to blanket the island! This knowledge inspires our trio to frolic in the plants. Yes, I believe that “frolic” is the only word that can be applied to their behavior.
But, unfortunately [or maybe not so unfortunately, when you consider some of the people out there], every other living creature on Earth has died. The threesome walk into town, where they find this swank 60s Hilton, which they find littered with dead bodies. Evelyn adopts the helpful attitude of “I won’t move! Not if I have to see any more! I won’t!” They eventually do get her to move, to the aforementioned swanky Hilton, where she bursts out with “I gotta have a drink!”
We then have the longest section devoted to consideration of the stench of rotting human bodies that I have ever seen. Harold wants to hang out and create a plan for leaving. Martin argues that it won’t be so long before the place stinks so bad they’ll be, like, totally grossified, so they decamp to this house on “the peninsula,” away from all the deadness. The possibility of burying or disposing of the bodies at sea is never discussed.
It’s not long after they get to the house that the whole focus of the movie changes, to center on the two men and their rivalry for Evelyn, who is now [see title]. We have the first glimmers in this scene where Harold says he wants to make a plan and leave the island for New York or somewhere, whereas Martin thinks it’s all totally futile and they should all just stay there and make the most of life. During this scene Evelyn suddenly shows up drunk, smoking, and in a sheer dress. She speaks of “rolling one.” Harold gives a rousing speech about how they all have to hold together and make a plan and all that, and eventually Evelyn says she’ll go upstairs and “get dressed.” I found it very interesting to see what she looked like when she came down again, just to see what was considered “modest” or “not sexy” back then. Nevertheless, Martin is not having any of it, and spends the rest of the movie delivering his every line with heaping helpings of snark.
There is then a moment where they find an ant and believe that, what with all the dead bodies, the island will soon be overrun with ants. What’s interesting is that they never seem to consider that the bodies will rot away eventually, or that they would get used to the smell over time, like coroners do, or that the ants would eventually recede, and then they could all just live on the island.
SPOILERS > > > So Harold can’t help but notice Martin and Evelyn frolicking and making eyes at each other on the beach, which eventually leads to some heavy words. Harold, while being a dick, earns respect for standing by his marriage and making an effort to improve their lot, while Martin is growing more and more unsympathetic for merely being a snide cock who refuses to help. I can’t wholly endorse Harold, after all, he IS about to rape Evelyn, but it does seem that when things get tough, so does he, and when it comes down to it, his marriage means a great deal to him. When Martin tells him that his marriage is means as much as the certificate commemorating it, Harold says “That certificate is a piece of paper. My marriage isn’t.” It’s a little disconcerting, I sort of had the general feeling that the movie was coming down on the side of the more sensitive Martin, but mistakenly ended up generating more viewer sympathy for Harold, but it turns out that the whole thing is at least angling for a higher level of subtlety than that.
So Harold goes to Evelyn and she says that “in the last world” he never gave her a chance to find out who she is, you know, who she REALLY is INSIDE, but “in this world” she is gaining more of a sense of where she belongs. Harold says “I’ll tell you where you belong,” and rapes her.
Next Martin is wandering all abject on the beach, and he runs into Harold and Evelyn, who, for some reason, have dressed up like a 60s couple heading out for a night on the town in Belmar, New Jersey. During a moment alone, Martin makes a big play for Evelyn, and her performance suddenly becomes good in her silent reactions to his passionate words, essentially the same scene I liked so much in Jefferson in Paris. Evelyn, who is quite conflicted to say the least, and shuttles throughout the movie between loving / hating Martin and / or Harold, agrees to run off with Martin. By the time Harold joins them, he informs Martin that he is going to have to leave.
There’s time for lots more conversation, of course, including an exchange in which Harold defends his position to Evelyn, saying that when the catastrophe happened he had suggestions and a plan of action and a system and they both had nothing, to which Evelyn replies “but we needed to find OUR OWN way,” and you want someone to say “Sweetness, do you REALIZE that the world has ended? That we are NOT all on some voyage of self-discovery here?”
Now come some serious spoilers, like the ending of the movie, and if you plan on watching it I would definitely skip ahead to beyond the spoiler mark below. Especially when you consider that at this point you will still probably have no idea how this thing is going to end. Anyway, so they have two cars at their disposal, and Martin is taking one to move away to wherever. He steals the keys from the other car and takes off, picking up Evelyn on the way, and leaving Harold there stranded. Harold shouts “I won’t come after you, Evelyn!” though of course within three minutes he does.
Martin, who after the catastrophe has had periodic moments of lightheadedness, passes out at the wheel and he and Evelyn crash into a tree. They proceed on foot, leaving you, the viewer, there saying “Uh, the guy just passed out for no reason… um, don’t you consider that a problem?” Once again in town, Evelyn suggests that she and Martin have a baby [not right there, but in the future]. Martin says “What’s the point? All that’s left for us now is to live without pain.” Surprise, Evelyn! This Martin of yours is on a whoooole different wavelength.
So Harold and Martin fight some more, until Martin is blinded [which I’m sure has some metaphorical significance], and they end up in this church. With a few more blows he’s dead, leading Harold to say “I killed him. Will we ever learn?” Then he and Evelyn walk out of the highly symbolic church as man and wife, making this entire thing about the most fucked-up affirmation of the bonds of marriage ever.
< < < SPOILERS END
If you look this movie up on IMDb you will see that people tend to either like it or think it’s crap, get into its vibe or think it’s boring, and think the ending is perfect, or think the ending is a total letdown. Myself, I liked it throughout. I was really into its whole cerebral, character- and ideology-driven vibe. As I indicated, it does split into two distinct parts, the first almost all setup, the second almost all marital tension. The first half has most of the utterly ridiculous parts, for example, as a friend of mine I was talking to about it today observed: all the oxygen went away, but all the carbon dioxide and everything else stayed? That sure is some selective apocalypse. And the manta ray attack [do manta rays ever attack? Do they even have teeth?], but for the most part this entire thing is about character, and is sci-fi in that highly cerebral, conceptual way that is almost completely dead in movies these days. You also have a script that, while it does have its uneven parts, is well-written and constructed, and contains more subtlety than can normally be found in cheapo Roger Corman flicks. For example, knowing what you know now, doesn’t it make a lot more sense that this thing begins at a cock fight?
Overall, a nice little 60s sci-fi thing that leaves you with more to think about than awesome action sequences. It was okay, not that great, and yet somehow I am full of fond feelings for it.
SHOULD YOU WATCH IT?
If you like science fiction that is more thoughtful and much heavier on character than action.
